For years, people have relied on the use of telephone books such as the white pages and yellow pages to find telephone numbers for persons and businesses alike. These listings are provided to telephone subscribers as part of their telephone service and are kept in the home and office. However, as society has grown more mobile, as exemplified by the proliferation of cellular and digital telephone users, the use of telephone books to find telephone numbers has become inconvenient simply because they are too bulky to carry around.
To solve this dilemma, many telephone companies now provide operator assisted directory assistance. One example is the 411 service offered by most telephone service providers. However, a fee is charged each time the service is used. Because the service is a pay-per-use type service, just a few calls can add up to a large amount fees. Thus, the costs can make use of such services prohibitive.
Less expensive methods of finding telephone listings have been developed through use of the computer. The white and yellow pages can now be searched online, and can be purchased on disc. Similar to telephone books, however, Internet and CD-ROM searches are only available when seated at a computer. Thus the mobile user is again forced to rely on expensive directory assistance. Further, CD-ROM listings become obsolete quickly and must be replaced.
As an additional drawback, telephone books are made of paper and ink. The quantity of trees that must be cut down each year to produce telephone books is staggering. Further, because of their size, telephone books take up a large quantity of room in landfills.
Thus, what is needed is a way to overcome the limitations of the prior art and eliminate the need for bulky and environmentally unfriendly telephone books, prohibitively expensive directory assistance calls, and time consuming Internet or CD-ROM phone listing searches.